Sinister Street

"Because you made a hash of marriage," Michael pointed out, "it doesn't follow that I'm not to marry Lily. I can't understand your objections."

"Listen. You couldn't make her happy. You couldn't make her any happier than the dozens of men who want to be fond of her for a short time without accepting the responsibility of marriage. Do you think I let any one of those dozens touch her? Not one, if I can get the money myself.

And I usually can. Well, why should I stand aside now and let you carry her off, even though you do want to marry her? I could argue against it on your side by telling you that you have no chance of keeping Lily faithful to you? Can't you see that she has no moral energy? Can't you see that she's vain and empty-headed? Can't you see that? But why should I argue with you for your benefit? I don't care a d.a.m.n about your side in the matter."

"What exactly do you care about?" Michael asked. "If Lily is what you say, I should have thought you'd be glad to be rid of her. After all, I'm not proposing to do her any wrong."

"Oh, to the devil with your right and wrong!" Sylvia cried. "Man can only wrong woman, when he owns her, and if this marriage is going to be a success, you'll have to own Lily. That's what I rebel against--the owners.h.i.+p of women. It makes me mad."

"Yes, it seems to," Michael put in. He was beginning to be in a rage with Sylvia's unreasonableness. "If it comes to owners.h.i.+p," he went on angrily, "I should have thought that handing her over to the highest bidder time after time would be the real way to make her the pitiable slave of man."

"Why?" challenged Sylvia. "You sentimental a.s.s, can't you understand that she treats them as I treat them, like the swine they are. She's free. I'm free."

"You're not at all free," Michael indignantly contradicted. "You're bound hand and foot by the l.u.s.t of wealthy brutes. If you read a few less elaborately clever books, and thought a few simpler thoughts, you'd be a good deal happier."

"I don't want to be happier."

"Oh, I think you're merely hysterical," he said disdainfully. "But, after all, your opinions about yourself don't matter to me. Only I can't see what right you have to apply them to Lily; and even if you have the right, I don't grasp your reason for wanting to."

"When I met Lily first," said Sylvia, "she had joined the chorus of a touring company in which I was. Her mother had just died, and I'd just run away from my husband. I thought her the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. That's three years ago. Is she beautiful still?"

"Of course she is," said Michael.

"Well, it's I who have kept her beautiful. I've kept her free also. If sometimes I've let her have affairs with men, I've taken care that they were with men who could do her no harm, for whom she had no sort of...."

"Look here," Michael burst in. "I'm sick of this conversation. You're talking

"I say you won't, and you shan't," Sylvia declared.

The deadlock had been reached, and they sat there on either side of the fire, glaring at each other.

"The extraordinary thing is," said Michael at last, "I thought you had a sense of humor when I first met you. And another extraordinary thing is that I still like you very much. Which probably rather annoys you. But I can't help saying it."

"The opinions of sentimentalists don't interest me one way or the other," Sylvia snapped.

"Will you answer one question? Will you tell me why you were so pleasant on the evening we met?"

"I really can't bother to go back as far as that."

"You weren't jealous _then_," Michael persisted.

"Who says I'm jealous now?" she cried.

"I do. What do you think you are, unless you're jealous? When is Lily coming down?"

"She isn't coming down until you've gone."

"Then I shall go and call her."

"She's not in London."

"I don't believe you."

A second deadlock was reached. Finally Michael decided to give Sylvia the pleasure of supposing that he was beaten for the moment. He congratulated himself upon the cunning of such a move. She was obviously going to be rather difficult to circ.u.mvent.

On the steps of the balcony he turned to her:

"You hate me because I love Lily, and you hate me twice as much because Lily loves me."

"It's not true," Sylvia declared. "It's not true. She doesn't love you, and what right have you to love her?"

She tossed back her mane of brown hair, biting her nails.

"What college was your husband at?" Michael suddenly inquired.

"Balliol."

"I wonder if I knew him."

"Oh, no. He was older than you."

It was satisfactory, Michael thought as he walked down Tinderbox Lane, that the conversation had ended normally. At least, he had effected so much. She had really been rather wonderful, that strange Sylvia. He would very much like to pit her against Stella. It was satisfactory to have his doubts allayed: notwithstanding her present opposition, he felt that he did owe Sylvia a good deal. But it would be absurd to let Lily continue in such a life: women always quarreled ultimately, and if Sylvia were to leave her, her fall would be rapid and probably irredeemable. Besides, he wanted her for himself. She was to him no less than to Sylvia the most beautiful thing in the world. He did not want to marry a clever woman: he would be much more content with Lily, from whom there could be no reaction upon his nerves. Somehow all his theories of behavior were being referred back to his own desires. It was useless to pretend any longer that his pursuit had been quixotry. Even if it had seemed so on that night when he first heard the news of Lily from Drake, the impulse at the back of his resolve had been his pa.s.sion for her.

When he looked back at his behavior lately, a good deal of it seemed to have been dictated by self-gratification. He remembered how deeply hurt he had felt by Poppy's treatment of what he had supposed his chivalry.

In retrospect his chivalry was seeming uncommonly like self-satisfaction.

His friends.h.i.+p for Daisy; for Barnes; for the underworld; it had been nothing but self-satisfaction. Very well, then. If self was to be the touchstone in future, he could face that standard as easily as any other. By the time he had reached the end of Tinderbox Lane Michael was convinced of his profound cynicism. He felt truly obliged to Sylvia for curing him of sentiment. He had so often inveighed against sentiment as the spring of human action, that he was most sincerely grateful for the proof of his own sentimental bias. He would go to Sylvia to-morrow and say frankly that he did not care a bit what Lily had been, was now, or would be; he wanted her. She was something beautiful which he coveted.

For the possession of her he was ready to struggle. He would declare war upon Sylvia as upon a rival. She should be rather surprised to-morrow morning, Michael thought, congratulating himself upon this new and ruthless policy.

On the next morning, however, all Michael's plans for his future behavior were knocked askew by being unable to get into Mulberry Cottage. His brutal frankness; his cynical egotism; his cold resolution, were ignominiously repulsed by a fast-closed door. Ringing a bell at intervals of a minute was a very undignified subst.i.tute for the position he had imagined himself taking up in that small square room. This errand-boy who stood at his elbow, gazing with such rapt interest at his ringing of the bell, was by no means the audience he had pictured.

"Does it amuse you to watch a bell being rung?" Michael asked.

The errand-boy shook his head.

"Well, why do you do it?"

"I wasn't," said the errand-boy.

"What are you doing, then?"

"Nothing."

Michael could not grapple with the errand-boy, and he retired from Tinderbox Lane until after lunch. He rang again, but he could get no answer to his ringing. At intervals until midnight he came back, but there was never an answer all the time. He went home and wrote to Sylvia:

173 CHEYNE WALK,

S.W.

Dear Sylvia,